


Thirty-four

by bearwonder



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26262466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearwonder/pseuds/bearwonder
Summary: A short character study on Remus in his thirty-fourth year.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Thirty-four

**Author's Note:**

> Why is it that I only like reading happy stories but I can only write sad ones? I'm sorry.

Thirty-four is not old, not in theory, anyway. Remus has seen people his age who look ten years younger, carefree Muggles still living in their prime, laughing and fucking and dreaming the dreams of youth. People who’ve never known a war.

At thirty-four, Remus spends three days out of every month laid up in bed, and at least two more limping. A lifetime of injuries has ruined him for walking more than a few miles at a stretch, the pain building slowly until something seizes and he can’t go on. Thirty-four and already an old man. Thirty-four and broken.

And then there’s Sirius. That night in the Shack, the first night of the rest of his life, Remus had wanted to believe that he had Sirius _back_. That the world had finally taken pity on him and given him one good thing in life. 

But Sirius is broken. Sirius is a thirty-four year old body with a mind that stopped maturing at the age of twenty-one. He’s falsely gregarious and darkly sulking by turns; he explodes with rage on a hair trigger and takes needless risks on impulse. Everything he does betrays a mindless selfishness. He does care about Harry, but even that is selfish. Sirius is looking to recapture the past, that time when he was happy, when he was alive and loved. If Sirius stopped developing the day he went to Azkaban, then to him it must feel like only a few months that James and Lily have been gone. He’s never been given the chance to process it, and now here he is, confronted with Harry, who looks so much like James and who clings to Sirius’s affection with a desperation born of a lifetime of neglect. Sirius used to cling to Remus the same way.

When they were young and in love, Remus had always assumed that he and Sirius would grow up together, facing challenges and changes side by side, and understanding each other all the better for it. The Sirius who Remus knew at Hogwarts was a peer, an equal, a companion. The Sirius of now can never be those things. The Sirius of now has missed the last twelve years of Remus’s life, years when he found the strength to move beyond their past, and worked to build himself a future. Years when he’s learned many things he cannot put into words, and so can never teach to Sirius. 

He does love Sirius, but it’s almost more like the love of a teacher for his student, or a father for his son. It’s strange to think of it that way, but it’s how he feels. Haggard and worn though he may be, Sirius is essentially twenty-one years old. It would feel wrong, dirty to desire someone whose mind is so much younger than his own. And so Remus loves him and mourns him all at once. He mourns the Sirius who could have been, the man he loved whose potential died on that October night along with James and Lily. He loves the Sirius he has now with the fierce protectiveness of a parent, and yet he aches inside every time he looks at him. 

He wonders if this is what it’s like for Sirius, when he looks at Harry. Something of a replacement for a man he once loved with his whole being, and yet no replacement at all. Someone he loves, but who doesn’t really know him at all. Sirius will never get James back, and Remus will never get back Sirius. Twelve years is too wide a chasm to bridge.


End file.
